Hear the Gospel message: God loves us. We sin and are therefore separated from Him. He sent his one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the just penalty (DEATH) for our sin and thus reconcile us, through faith in Jesus and by His grace, to God. Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God and ascended into heaven where he now sits at the right hand of the Father as our advocate. “Whom so ever, calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Come to Jesus.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

That Great City!

Revelation 21: 10 -- "And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God,"
Revelation 21: 16 -- "And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal."
So, how big is that? Will we, Christians, all fit?
Well a furlong here is a Greek stadion which is 1/8th of a mile. So, the Jerusalem cube has a volume of 3,375,000,000 cubic miles. That sounds kinda big; but how big? Let's compare it to the space we live in here on earth.
The radius of the earth is approximately 3,959 miles. So, the volume of space we live in can be calculated using the following formula:

V = 4(pi)((3959 + x)^3 - 3959^3)/3

where x is the altitude in miles above sea level for the top of our space.

According to National Geographic the highest town in the world is La Rinconada, Peru some 3.2 miles above sea level. For x = 3.2, V = 630,785,690 cubic miles. The Great City is more than 5 times as large. Ok, commercial jets fly at about 45,000 feet or about 8.5 miles. For x = 8.5, V = 1,677,767,946 cubic miles. That is about half the size of the Great City. The tropopause has an altitude of 10.6 miles. This is the end of weather. For x = 10.6, V = 2,093,384,542 cubic miles, not even 2/3 rds the size of the Great City. In fact, not until x > 17, well into the stratosphere, does the volume of "our space" reach that of the Great City. Bacterial spores are the only things that live in the stratosphere. So, I think we can safely say that the Great City is larger than the total of space that we all, saved and unsaved, live in now. Glory to God.